We get syrupy about “Hidden Figures” from all over and know little about the heroes and sheroes who grew up in our own back yard. Mrs. French L. Cowens was born French L. Jackson to Willie Mae and Willis Jackson in Gladewater, Texas. She grew up in old North Central Dallas.
A 73-year-old Black photographer settled his lawsuit against Getty Images U.S. Inc. in which he alleged he was subjected to racial and/or age discrimination because he was denied a fulltime position despite 26 years of competent freelance work.
A federal appeals court today overturned a Los Angeles judge’s sweeping order forcing local government to offer shelter to every unhoused person on downtown’s Skid Row by the middle of next month, and sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings. A panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the district court had “abused its discretion” because it did not have authority to issue the preliminary injunction order based on claims not pled in the complaint brought last year by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, an association of downtown residents, homeless individuals and property owners seeking to compel the county and city of Los Angeles to find shelter for the thousands of people camping on city sidewalks.
During my tenure at the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials (COMTO), it became clear to me that access was the foundation of economic opportunity. The transportation sector lacked diversity, equity and inclusion, and this was glaringly obvious to both leadership and employees. Pathways began to emerge to grow a diverse pool of talent, but it was obvious that a more organizational framework was needed to operate at full capacity to best serve veterans, women, underrepresented, and underserved workers; groups that had been previously overlooked.
“I’m not a lawyer, but it seemed clear to me that the Justices (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was absent because, in the words of Chief John Roberts, she was “indisposed due to illness”) thought the issue was what the pleading standard for a §1981 claim should be, not at this point whether Comcast had racially discriminated against Byron Allen.” — Armstrong Williams
Kimberly Forbes, who is Black, alleges retaliation, race and gender discrimination and intentional infliction of emotional distress in the complaint filed Friday
According to a recent study by Pew Research, 84 percent of black respondents said people not seeing racial discrimination where it exists is a bigger problem than people seeing racism where it doesn’t exist. Whites were the only group where a majority, 52 percent, said the opposite was true – that the bigger problem is people seeing racism where it really does not exist.
Los Angeles is in the throes of a Black jobs crisis, indicates a new study released by the UCLA Labor Center, the Los Angeles Black Worker Center, and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. “Ready to Work, Uprooting Inequity: Black Workers in Los Angeles County,” was authored by Saba Waheed, Tamara Haywood, Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, Psalm Brown, and Reyna Orellana. It details how the lack of access to quality jobs negatively impacts the Black community, Their report, launched at Holman United Methodist Church and via live stream on March 21 under the hash tag #HealBlackFutures, argues for the